The readily identifiable story is about moving out of rented houses and buying a home. And despite the many issues faced by the family, the director ensures that the film is an easy, pleasant watch. The rest of this review may contain spoilers.
Sri Ganesh’s 3BHK revolves around a middle-class family of four. Sarathkumar plays the father, Vasudevan. He is a bookkeeper in the kind of import-export company you’d find in the K Balachander films. He wants a big house, but the rents keep increasing, and so the houses he moves into are small. Devayani plays his long-suffering wife, Shanthi. In one of their rented houses, she is disappointed that there is so little natural light. Later, this character trait – this want – comes back. In yet another house, the light is better. She smiles. The movie opens in 2006, when their two children are still in school. Siddharth and Meetha Raghunath play Prabhu and Aarthi. The girl is the better student but this being a typical middle-class household, she studies in a government school to ensure that the boy gets to study in a good private school. He comes first. Under the film’s calm exterior, writer-director Sri Ganesh keeps jabbing us with these very pointed points.
Vasudevan wants to buy a house. He thinks that this ownership will give him respect. But the family wants a 3BHK. Given their shaky economic circumstances, why not something more modest, something more realistic and achievable, like a 2BHK? There is no clear answer given, but there are hints that Vasudevan has something of a complex that his younger brother is a rich man with a bungalow. Vasudevan will never be able to get to that level of housing, so maybe a 3BHK is the next best thing! Also, you don’t have to take the title literally. It could apply to anything that a middle-class family wants, and which is out of reach. And as they think they are getting closer to achieving this dream, a new expense turns up, and then they save up again, and another new expense turns up, and this cycle keeps repeating.
The obvious parent-film of 3BHK is Balu Mahendra’s Veedu, but this is much lighter in treatment. Though the family keeps suffering through one crisis after another, the depths of their despair are kept on the surface. Like Tourist Family, 3BHK is an easy watch about a tough situation. Everyone is really, really sweet and nice, and the central family unit is really close, and Sri Ganesh makes sure that the volume of the melodrama stays low. At one point, Vasudevan stops talking to Prabhu, but this is possibly the gentlest father-son conflict we’ve seen in the movies. Earlier generations of Tamil cinema would have turned this subject into a tearjerker, but today, we are seeing it all from a cool distance. So we get the satisfaction of watching and identifying with something, but without getting too worked up about it. It’s a “mellow”-drama.
The writing is super-clean. The characters age over some 20 years, and the time passages are beautifully done. Vasudevan has to learn to deal with computers. Prabhu is told that IT is the next big thing and he should opt for that discipline over Mechanical Engineering, which is what he wants to do, which is what he has an aptitude for. In other words, 3BHK is not just the story of a family’s dream. It is also the story of the two-odd decades of transition that occur around that dream. Sarathkumar and Siddharth pitch in with strong, dignified performances, and because the volume of the film is kept low, the rare outbursts really stand out when they happen. I wish some parts had been detailed better, like Prabhu agreeing to marry someone because his father wants this to happen, or Aarthi getting involved in a domestic abuse case. But again, we understand these events because this family is based on mutual respect and sacrifice.
And that is when the subtext – perhaps a sub-story? – arises. How much of our dreams do we sacrifice because we love our parents? Aarthi does not want to get married, but she faces the old reasoning that “we may not get hold of such a nice family again”. Prabhu lets go of his dream of Mechanical Engineering because his father believes IT is the future. In the midst of all its niceness, 3BHK says that parents can be wrong. They may want the best for you, but this may not really be what’s best for you. This angle lends a welcome touch of acidity to offset the sweetness, though, again, this is all presented in a mild, mellow, easy-to-digest manner. It’s terrific to see divorce and rejecting a well-paying job being normalised in the context of a middle-class family, where tradition and “what will people say?” are everything.
After an excellent debut with 8 Thottakkal, Sri Ganesh slipped up with the underwhelming Kuruthi Aattam. 3BHK is a welcome return to the form and assured pacing and storytelling of his first film. There are many visual touches, like how clothes are ironed over a blanket on the floor, and the family later gets an ironing board. A couple connects over ice-cream cups, and much later, they reconnect near an ice-cream cart. In the film’s best performance, Chaitra J Achar plays Aishwarya, who is Prabhu’s classmate and hesitant love interest. It’s a small part, but Chaitra lights up every single frame she is in – she seems incapable of false emotion. One of my favourite touches is that Prabhu keeps hearing her name and hopes it is her, but finds out it’s always some other Aishwarya. Without emphasis, without big romantic gestures, we realise what this woman means to this man.
For the most part, 3BHK is like this emotion. Sri Ganesh doesn’t insist. He makes sure we get the big points, but the smaller touches he leaves to us to get – like a scent that lingers in the air. In another movie, the relative played by Subbu Panchu might have been a villain. Here, he is just someone who is careful about his hard-earned money, and despite this trait, he ends up doing something that he thinks will help Vasudevan’s family. This is how people are, especially family. They are complicated. They exist in many shades, not just black and white. I wish the story had landed with a bigger punch overall, and that the conflicts had been more powerful. But the film’s niceness is undeniable. 3BHK is a solid drama and further proof this year that smaller is better in Tamil cinema.
